Doctor X (1932)

Dr. X, posing in the shadows to look creepy.

Ingredients: Cannibalism. Lunar madness. Synthetic flesh. A somber, isolated mansion on the craggy cliffs of Long Island. A flat-footed reporter with a penchant for practical jokes. Not one, but five deranged mad scientists with severe psychological trauma, one of which is likely a new serial killer just hitting his stride. Fay Wray in a negligee, screaming bloody murder. Such are the appeals of Michael Curtiz's delightfully creepy pre-code horror Doctor X, all filmed in painterly two-strip Technicolor.

In investigating a series of cannibalistic murders, police have a strong hunch that the killer must come from Dr. Jerry Xavier's Academy of Surgical Research. "If you're just looking for someone to hang suspicion on," Dr. X (Lionel Atwill) says to the police investigating the murder, "there's not a man in my faculty that wouldn't come under that heading." Ain't that the truth. The Academy's faculty is a veritable rogue's gallery of psychopaths in the making. We have the one-handed Dr. Wells (Preston Foster), who has recently returned from an expedition to Africa to study cannibalism and keeps a living heart in a jar on his desk. Dr. Haines (John Wray, no relation), who is studying "brain grafting", and the one-eyed Dr. Rowitz (Arthur Edmund Carewe), were shipwrecked together off the coast of Tahita and are suspected of having eaten one of their companions through necessity (did they develop a taste for it?). Rounding out the set we have the crotchety paralytic Dr. Duke (Harry Beresford), who studies the effect of "moon rays" on the mind along with Dr. Haines. Dr. Duke may appear to be the least neurotic of group, but he couples this normalcy with such ill manners that merely to say hello is a personal affront.

Under the guidance of the most accommodating police force in New York history, Dr. X takes his staff to his house on Long Island to conduct his own investigation. As a scientist, he conducts this search exactly as one might expect--through a series of experiments. Actually, his experiment works something like a cross between a polygraph test and Hamlet's play "The Mouse Trap."  The suspects are strapped down and hooked up to a device that measures their "blood reaction" while scenes of the murders are acted out in front of them. Naturally, the retelling gets far too real for anyone's taste and threatens to entangle a pair of innocents: Dr. X's daughter Joanne (Fay Wray) and a stowaway reporter (Lee Tracy) looking for a scoop (he'll settle for either a good story or the delicious Joanne).

Sssynnthetic flessshhh...!!

The acting is really fine all around. Preston Foster's gleeful chant of "Synthetic flesh!" as he grabs handfuls of goo from a smoking vat and smears it on his face is the best portrayal of a scientist's love affair with his own work since Colin Clive shrieked, "It's alive!" the year before. Lee Tracy as the bumbling reporter who jumps at shadows even while surrounded by actual monsters enhances the tension in the rest of the film by juxtaposing his silliness with its seriousness. I find myself wanting to cheer him on when he walks past a table without knocking it over. The scene of him hiding in a closet with a gang of skeletons, much of which was ad-libbed, is particularly well-conceived. The ever-lovely Fay Wray is wonderful as the doctor's devoted daughter. As Joanne she resists the "damsel in distress" role as long as humanly possible, braving every danger with stoic calm until the scream positively bursts out of her, the intensity of her fear wildly amplified by her demonstrated strength of character.

Is this the hand of a killer, or of an actor pretending to be a killer? You decide.

The biggest appeal in Doctor X, though, is not its story or acting, although both are solid throughout. No, art director Anton Grot gets the blue ribbon here for his dense, expressionistic set design and masterful use of early color. The Technicolor print was long believed to have been lost, but was discovered in the personal collection of Jack Warner after his death in 1978. UCLA has done a fine restoration, and the film looks fresh and new. The images are murky and strange, engendering in the viewer a sense of malaise long before the plot justifies the fear already created. The sets themselves are many and varied, including a New York waterfront, a brothel, Dr. X's academy, and his Long Island home. Two full sets of "mad scientist" labs are used, one at the academy and one at the mansion, each of which is full of all the bubbling, oversized beakers, big mysterious dials, billowing smoke and buzzing electricity that we know and love. 

Something is rotten in the state of New York.

Curtiz made good use of his pre-code freedoms, seasoning the story with adult themes that wouldn't have passed muster a few years later: cannibalism, rape, and prostitution are all essential to the plot, and seem far more shocking than they would in a modern film by the novelty of their context. All told, Curtiz really brought everything together with Doctor X, combining the solid acting of this ensemble cast with gorgeous set design and good, old-fashioned story-telling to create one of the most powerful and frightening horror films of early Hollywood.

The Dead Zone (1983)

Christopher Walken as a less kind, less gentle Johnny Smith

 Despite my love for the works of David Cronenberg, for a long time 1983's The Dead Zone didn't really register on my radar.  I'd seen it when I was a kid, and had it filed away in my brain under "above average Stephen King adaptations."  Given the vast quantity of films based on King's work, that's a file that doesn't exactly beg for reevaluation.   But Cronenberg is a director, like Stanley Kubrick before him, who excels at the peculiar skill of telling other people's stories in a way that enhances rather than diminishes his own authorial voice.  (Indeed, of the twelve films Cronenberg has made from The Dead Zone through next year's Cosmopolis, only two are based on original screenplays.) And so, far from being just another Stephen King adaptation, The Dead Zone is an essential step in Cronenberg's filmography that sheds light on the obsessions and perspectives that propel his work.

Rabid (1977)

Marilyn Chambers as Rose, "Typhoid Mary" for a new strain of rabies

Everybody has that fear that affects them like no other.  Other thoughts might make you uneasy, might get your heart racing, but there's that one that has a special place in your nightmares, that twists your stomach into knots and robs you of sleep.  For me, it's always been physical corruption.  A maniac with a machete is nowhere near as scary to me as a killer inside, attacking and transforming your very cells and rotting you away from within.  It's no wonder, then, that the early films of David Cronenberg, those labeled as "body-horror," or sometimes "venereal horror," are among my very favorite horror films.

Rabid, Cronenberg's second feature, tells the story of Rose (Marilyn Chambers) a young woman involved in a terrible motorcycle accident.  When the ambulance comes to whisk her away, none of the bystanders question the fact that it arrives so soon with no phone calls having been made.  And so it is that she's taken, not to a state hospital, but to a private plastic surgery clinic nearby, where the chief of surgery is all too eager to try out a new experimental technique.  It seems he's developed a process whereby skin grafts can be transformed into something like embryo cells, able to match the structures of nearby tissue.  Although the technique has shown considerable promise, there's also the risk of rapid tumor development, and so Rose is kept under observation for 30 days in an induced coma.

Frank Moore as Hart, Rose's erstwhile lover

The hospital is the setting for several satirical moments that establish Cronenberg's themes long before things inevitably start to go badly.  The patients in the clinic talk casually among themselves about the multitude of times they've gone under the knife.  A man talks about the latest work being done on his eyes, as though routine plastic surgery was as essential as regular check-ups.  A young woman says she's back to have another nose-job; apparently, her daddy thought she still looked too much like him after the last one.  All these people seem at best dimly aware that their bodies are incredibly complicated organic systems; they all see their flesh as lumpy clay from which they might sculpt something more perfect than human.

If that is the goal, then Rose is the realization.  She awakens in the middle of the night as almost an entirely new kind of being.  She rips the IV from her arm; it seems she no longer has the need for traditional sustenance.  Instead, her biological imperative is now centered on a new "organ" grown from the experimental tissue grafted on to her.  Under her arm is a tiny, grotesque orifice from which extrudes, in moments of passion or bloodlust, a phallic "stinger" with which she feeds.

The sexual or venereal overtone to Rose's mutations in unmistakable

Rose's new feeding organ doesn't just provide her with sustenance, it also spreads an infection to her victims.  Once "pricked" men and women develop delirium, sweat profusely, foam at the mouth, and eventually lapse into fits of irrational violence.  Worse, they can spread the virus through their own saliva, so what begins as a handful of isolated incidents quickly becomes a plague sweeping across Montreal (a clear inspiration for the "rage virus" in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.)

For all of the fantasy in its construction, Rabid is a remarkably prescient film.  The controversy which would erupt over the use of embryonic stem cells was still two decades away, and yet that is exactly the foundation of Rabid's transformational science.  Likewise, had it been release even a few years later, the sexual basis of this deadly plague would have made an AIDS allegory seem inevitable.

Montreal under martial law, as body disposal units drive by

The scope of this film is also stunning, given the miniscule budget Cronenberg had to work with.  Rabid was made largely with government grants; its final budget was less then one thirtieth of what he made The Fly with nine years later.  Yet, in an interview accompanying the film's DVD release, Cronenberg describes Rabid as his first "epic."  There are a tremendous number of characters here, with locations across Montreal and the surrounding countryside.  Most impressive of all are the scenes in the final act once Montreal is put under martial law.  Cronenberg uses well the resources at hand to depict a city caught between a deadly plague and an over-zealous and incompetent government response.

As the woman at the center of the plague, Marilyn Chambers does quite a good job depicting Rose's desperation to understand and to resist the new instincts driving her.  Although far from a world-class performance, there's a much-appreciated understatement to her take on the role that suggests she could have developed into an actress of reliable talent had she been given the chance.  It seems a real shame that the stigma attached to her participation in the adult film industry kept her from a legitimate acting career.

The rabies vaccine doesn't seem to be working

Rabid is not the best of Cronenberg's horror films; the 80's would bring genuine masterpieces seemingly every couple of years.  But as an early example of his favorite themes, it already clearly shows the talent that would make him, in the words of J. Hoberman, writing for the Village Voice, "film for film, the most audacious and challenging director in the English-speaking world."

We Are the Night (2010)

Having recently written up my love for The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, it's only fitting, I suppose, that I should follow that up with a visit to the zombie's more gregarious undead cousin.  Even more than zombies, our culture is presently utterly saturated with vampires across books, television and film. 

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)

Grau's zombies show a little gumption

I've been a fan of zombie films ever since I first saw the original Night of the Living Dead years and years ago.  Since then I've watched too many to count.  Especially in the last few years since 28 Days Later the big and small screen have been so flooded with zombies that even an aficionado like myself can't keep up.  But I keep trying.  The sub-genre, at its best, can provide some of the best thrills that horror film has to offer, so I'm perfectly willing to wade through the swill to find the good stuff.  And let me tell you, friends, I found the good stuff tonight.  The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) is, in my not particularly humble opinion, the best zombie film not directed by George Romero or Lucio Fulci.

Ray Lovelock (Murder Rock) plays George, a Manchester hippie heading out to the countryside for a few days of peace and quiet.  When he stops for gas his motorcycle is rear-ended by Edna (the beautiful Cristina Galbó, star of one of my all-time favorite giallos What Have You Done to Solange?)  His bike out of commission until a new wheel can be sent in from Glasgow, he decides that Edna owes him a ride the rest of the way, and so off they go.

Cristina Galbó as Edna

Along the way they come across...the machine.  As far as explanations for zombieism go, this has to be one of the kookiest.  The Ministry of Agriculture is testing out a new form of alternative pest control which uses ultra-sonic radiation to induce insects to kill each other (so far so good, in fact given recent news, vaguely plausible as far as horror film tech goes.)  But while this was shown in testing to work only on primitive nervous systems, it seems that humans nervous systems are primitive enough to be affected when they're recently deceased (or when...well, I don't want to spoil that surprise.)  So yeah, that's kind of silly, but if you're watching zombie films for their scientific plausibility I don't know what to tell you.

Such an ecological theme is hardly novel in zombie movies, or horror films more generally, even in 1974 when this film was made.  But whereas often the theme is a gimmick that receives mere lip service in the pursuit of easy thrills, Grau treats it with a grave solemnity that provides thematic resonance to the atmosphere of dread which pervades the film.  Long before the first zombie shambles to life, the opening scenes depict Manchester as a diseased and dying town, chocking in its own exhaust.

Director Jorge Grau adds an exciting wrinkle to the standard issue zombie plot.  At this point in the zombie apocalypse the stumbling dead are few enough in number that they're only causing localized chaos.  That means that when the police find George and Edna near the body of the first victim, they're understandably unimpressed with tales of cannibalistic monsters and jump to the more reasonable conclusion that they've found a pair of drug-addicted loons.  Consequently, our heroes find themselves on the run from both the dead and the cops.

Throughout the movie Grau combines terrific atmosphere and remarkable gore effects with stunning results.  The green rolling hills of the British (ok, technically Italian) countryside are not the obvious choice for setting a zombie movie, but in addition to being picturesque they create a palpable sense of isolation.  Moreover, Grau makes wonderful use of darkness and fog with some pretty great cinematography.  But the gore effects are really something special.  Even nearly forty years after the fact, this jaded horror fan was shocked by some of the scenes in this movie -- the effects are better than anything Romero and Savini pulled off in Dawn of the Dead four years later.  Indeed this was one of the UK's infamous "Video Nasties" and didn't receive an uncut video release in that country until 2002.

Grau makes great use of churches and cemeteries for Gothic atmosphere

The acting is mostly quite good, well above average for this kind of film.  Arthur Kennedy, as the inspector is particularly good.  The political undertones of Grau's film are embodied in the difference between young hip George and the brutal, conservative inspector.  It's interesting to note that such a character could have been the hero of any number of poliziotteschi films (take no prisoner "tough cop" movies inspired by Dirty Harry, which were all the vogue in Italy in the 1970's), whereas here the same characteristics glorified in those movies make Kennedy's inspector the antagonist of this film.  I don't know whether Grau intended the role as a commentary on those films, or on the Franco regime in his home country of Spain, but in either case Kennedy takes what could have been a one-note screeching villain and creates a fully realized character.  The Inspector is bigoted and quick to violence, but in Kennedy's hands it is clear that he is a human being motivated by principles, however misguided.  Grau notes, in an interview published in Jay Slater's essential volume Eaten Alive: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies, that "[he] took the job for purely professional reasons, almost mercenary...But when he met me he realised that it wasn't any old film, that for me every scene was important, and that awoke in him the reflexes of a man of the theater, a man full of love for his profession."
 
Zombie films have gotten bigger and flashier in the intervening years, but they've rarely been better.  Even fewer have captured the overwhelming atmosphere of dread -- the utter implacability of fate.  As horror fans we end up sitting through so much dreck that it's easy to forget why we bother.  But this...this is why.

The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy is the third great Universal horror film of the 1930's, after Dracula and Frankenstein, and the only one that does not have a literary source. It was conceived as a sort of collage of successful elements from other films--Boris Karloff's charismatic Frankenstein pasted on top of most of the plot of Dracula, with an Egyptian setting to capitalize on the world-wide craze for all things Egyptian that followed the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Although the elements of the plot were thrown together purely based on what the producers thought would sell tickets, the end result is something much greater than the sum of its parts. In particular, the resemblance to Dracula, though remarkable on the surface, does not touch the story's substance. While in Dracula triumph is found through human ingenuity, The Mummy is a fatalistic passion play in which the humans are merely spectators in the world of the gods.

The Night of the Hunted (1980)

Brigitte Lahaie and Dominique Journet

Many of the films of Jean Rollin, especially the early vampire films and gothic masterpiece The Iron Rose, seem to take place in a present haunted by an inescapable past.  His protagonists may begin the films confident professionals, career criminals, or bored intellectuals, but once they set foot outside their comfort zones they're inevitably confronted by the same reality.  Rollin's is a world in which the countryside is dotted with decaying castles and villas, resplendent in their faded glamour.  A seductive world in which death is but a prolonged dusk and curses may haunt for generations.  And most importantly a world in which a beach of rugged beauty that promises the infinite, glimpsed in childhood, becomes a stage for transformation and rebirth.